


Do You Have My Notebook?

by Lil_Yanna17



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Artist Steve Rogers, Feels, M/M, Memories, One Shot, Other, Past Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, Repressed Memories, Sad, Steve's notebook, lo siento, nude bucky, steve/bucky - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-09
Updated: 2016-01-09
Packaged: 2018-05-12 18:32:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5676247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lil_Yanna17/pseuds/Lil_Yanna17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve goes to the museum in search of his old sketchbook. Old memories are brought up, and conflicts between past and present leave Steve on the fence of moving on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Do You Have My Notebook?

“Do you have my notebook?” The museum. An entire floor for him, for the Howling Commandos, for Bucky. Murals of himself, what he used to be. Little kids run around him and old veterans sit in remembrance of the days when they wish they could fight alongside Captain America. He saw they had his old uniform, pictures, videos, his #1 comic, even his dog tags. Wouldn’t they have his notebook? When he found it with fresh crisp papers, he had taken it in for himself. Self portraits of himself, scrawny. Someone sitting alone on a step, and a handful of pages with Bucky. In his casual clothes, some of the firm outlines of his uniform Steve loved. His soft eyes and curled lips. 

He remembered sitting in their apartment watching Bucky fill out enlistment forms, laying on the couch with a hat pulled over his eyes. He’d drawn every detail he could remember of Bucky. The lights and feel of the Stark Technology Convention captured on a small paper, Bucky standing in a crowd of girls only looking at Steve. Why had he invited the girls along? Steve smiled to himself under his own cap. He had always liked Bucky, always. After his mother had died, he knew for sure he needed Bucky to be with him. He had drawn a nude portrait of Bucky once, but he had thought it was too risque for even his personal notebook and had torn it out and left it crumpled on the street. He was a good artist, and still was, but the stress of reliving old memories had blocked him from picking up a pencil. He needed his notebook back. He needed Bucky back.

“Do you have my notebook?” He had tracked down the Curator of his own exhibition, a plaque of her was lined on a wall with all the other old and grumpy looking curators. A picture showed young brunette woman with his shield in gold as her earrings. She looked up from her old dark wood desk with wide eyes. “Oh, sorry,” That was a bit of an unexpected barge into her office. “I don’t know how to verify that i’m uh-” He pointed a quick finger at her office wall with a framed picture from when he was touring as a gimmick. It was signed, a nice touch, but he had signed so many before this was just an old diminished part of himself. “Him.” 

“Oh please, Captain Rogers,” She had taken his and in hers and patted it gently “there’s no need for verification.” She had lit up the entire room when Steve walked in. Surprisingly she had maintained her posture enough to stand up and welcome him in the room with a warm handshake. Her smile made Steve blush and look away, he was never “smooth” around women, even when she had turned three shades darker since he walked in. “I’m Michelle. Please, sit!” It was a dream for some to meet the hero himself, she was a part of that group. 

“The exhibit is great.” He smiled to a bobblehead of himself on her desk. Her office had framed pictures of him, some in black and white like the videos of him and Bucky laughing, and some in color, like the video of Peggy explaining the pain of the loss of Steve. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. People still love him, even if he didn’t. “I see you’re fan.”

“Oh! Oh jeeze you can say that. I spent my life researching you, studying the differences between new and old ideals, your sacrifice” She pushed a curled strand of hair behind her ear. “How you grew up and the relations you had growing up like Bucky-” Steve shifted in the wooden chair, the loud creak broke off her sentence. “How have you been lately, Steve?” Her eyes widened again, a quirk he noticed. “Can I call you Steve? I’m sorry.” 

“It’s fine, really.” He enjoyed her company, but the thought of getting his notebook back and her mentioning of Bucky made him want to go back to his apartment and be in peace, alone. “I’m just trying to find what makes me happy.” He tilted his head and tried to smile, even he knew it looked fake. 

“Would the notebook make you happy?” 

“It would really, really help.” 

“I have it.” She reached for a necklace and pulled a key from under the collar on her sweater. “I kept it from the public, they decided it was lost in storage.” She stood and walked to a two tiered filing cabinet and unlocked the top drawer. “I decided it was too… intimate?” Steve got up and stood behind her, blushing again. 

“Thank you, thank you.” She handed him the bounded black leather notebook, the edges of the paper turned yellow, folded in on themselves. The front of it was encrypted with dust, he would have to be gentle with it now. Opening it, he braced himself to fall under the spell of nostalgic pasts he had. A drawing of a frail, weak ghost. It wasn’t him anymore. How had he ever been like this? The paged crinkled under his fingers as he turned the page to the first picture of Bucky, leaning on their kitchen counter. He remembered drawing this, he was nervous about Bucky moving, ruining his reference point, or Bucky asking him what he was drawing. After a while it got easier, maybe Bucky had seen Steve was drawing him. Maybe bucky wanted Steve to draw him, but he would linger longer, take longer naps and smile at Steve more than usual when he had this notebook. “You don’t know how much this really means to me.” She had been watching Steve with gentle eyes, careful not to say anything and ruin the reunion of past and present Steve Rogers. 

“I always thought i’d have to give it to Peggy.” She inhaled through her nose and let out a steady breath, as though she was about to cry. “I don’t know if she would even know what it meant, y’know?” Was she crying? 

“I think i’m gonna go. I need to think about myself.” He ran his fingers over the cover once again. “Thanks, Michelle.” His smile was genuine this time. 

“Anything for Steve!” Her hand on his back guided him out of her office. “If you need anything else, please come back.” The mural of himself and his friends finally broke him, tears tingled down his face, he needed to see Bucky’s memorial before he isolated himself again. James Buchanan Barnes, the muse of his notebook. The definition of Captain America.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this at midnight with no beta so sorry if there's mistakes! <3 <3


End file.
